Yeah if once it airs, stuff is fair game, that seems reasonable, since then I avoid the thread until I see that week's ep, but if it's always going to be half a week or a week ahead of that, well, that's fine too I guess, but then I will just avoid it in general, at least until the season is over.

I think it's actually pretty unlikely that the episodes will go up early on HBO Go every week, since I think it was mostly about HBO promoting that new interactive-watching HBO Go thingie (which is actually probably a great way for people who haven't read the books to watch the show; if you forget who someone is, you can click on them and a little slideshow of what they've done in the past comes up, etc). They did it once last year, too.

Huh. Definitely didn't happen with GoT last year (apart from the one episode they put up on HBO Go early). I know that the people who got screeners got episodes 1-4, so if it was gonna come from that source, it probably would have already. HBO's site just says April 10-May 7 for episode 3 to come up on HBO Go.

Man all the north of the Wall ish is going to be brutal as shit for the rest of this season and into the next. I dug the Craster scenes, though I envisioned Craster himself as a hell of a lot more dissipated and fugly than that. Dude looked way too clean.

Can we just skip the Shea stuff, though, seriously. I just can't believe we have to hear that woman's line readings for the next good while. They were bad enough on the page.

Yeah, the woman who plays Shea is one of their very few (their only?!) real casting missteps. I don't mind those scenes as much as you do though, since they have her say less than in the books, and basically just make them excuses for Peter Dinklage to chew scenery.

And yeah, the beyond-the-Wall stuff is going to be super-rad. Fucking HALFHAND

Yeah, the woman who plays Shea is one of their very few (their only?!) real casting missteps. I don't mind those scenes as much as you do though, since they have her say less than in the books, and basically just make them excuses for Peter Dinklage to chew scenery.

But dude it goes on and on and on--the rest of this season and all of the next one! Hopefully it'll get condensed to just a few scenes, though, as you suggest.

To other folks who are watching the show but have not read the books: do you also by and large have no fucking clue what's going on or who anyone is at any given moment? I can follow the broad strokes but if I didn't go back and read a recap or two afterwards I'd be pretty lost. Obviously so far this season is easier than last was, since there are at least some characters we know already, but still. I had to explain to M who Theon was because she couldn't remember, and he's a pretty big part of the show at this point.

I don't have too much trouble, but if you asked me to name everyone, then it would be trickier (though mostly I've got that down by now). So I guess the only times it can be tricky is when people are talking about people, and I have to figure that out, but usually the context helps. I also rewatched Season 1 with someone (introducing them to the show) before Season 2 started, so I'm sure that helped too.

To other folks who are watching the show but have not read the books: do you also by and large have no fucking clue what's going on or who anyone is at any given moment? I can follow the broad strokes but if I didn't go back and read a recap or two afterwards I'd be pretty lost. Obviously so far this season is easier than last was, since there are at least some characters we know already, but still. I had to explain to M who Theon was because she couldn't remember, and he's a pretty big part of the show at this point.

Ha, with Theon, though, this a feature not a bug. He makes a *huge* leap in prominence between 1 and 2; the show actually took much greater pains than the books did to include him in 1. One of the pleasures of ASOIF is that characters can be important for a while, then disappear or be killed unceremoniously, and random characters who did one minor thing like 1000 pages ago can suddenly become central to the plot. Just wait till Beric Dondarrion shows up again, lol. He was in season 1 for about 15 seconds and didn't say a word! But he's important!